Ryan, in a series of articles in Quadrant, expressed regret for allowing Clark's exuberance to go unchecked. Detailing gross inaccuracies in Clark's History of Australia, Ryan lamented the fact that Clark behaved more like a political pamphleteer than a historian. The contents of Ryan's authoritative and incisive critique were ignored. A smudged photo was shown depicting Ryan as a man of diminutive status. The programme documented the response at the time to Ryan's criticism. It was a parade of a Australia's cultural Great and the Good, like Robert Hughes, who condemned Ryan's attacks as cheap, and implied that he was a coward for publishing his criticism after Clark's death. Hughes later admitted that he never read Ryan's piece.

So what ? Three left leaning documentaries surely don't condemn the whole corporation to the charge of bias. Not exactly, however last year the ABC screened a fly-on-the-wall style documentary on Graeme Campbell's 1996 election campaign. It was a relatively objective account of Campbell's campaign, and for some reason, perhaps Campbell's initial support of Hanson, the ABC deemed it fit at the end of the programme to provide a disclaimer and an apology.

Then there was the apology and disclaimer after the ABC screened two episodes of a British series Against Nature. The series endeavoured to expose what it saw as environmental myths and fallacies of the environmental movement. The series had caused a fuss in the UK with shrill cries of bias. An independent report into the television series found that the programme was not overtly bias, but it had had unfairly edited some interviews.

After the screening of the second episode the complaints rolled in. Triple J squealed and those associated with the programme were labelled 'revolutionary Marxists.' Greenpeace was particularly cross that the programme had drawn a theoretical line from National Socialism to Environmentalism. It was used as evidence to cite the delusional nature of the programme. And yet anyone who knew anything about the theoretical basis of national socialism and fascism could see the legitimacy of the argument.

All told, the fault that the ABC sees fit to offer disclaimers and apologies after these programmes, but not for the left leaning documentaries ? Whatever the reason it indicates the left leaning bias of the corporation, a hangover from the Whitlam era.

As someone once said of one of the Hanover Kings, 'he was a man of much wit, but little judgment.' The comment was tailor made for Gough Whitlam, but his charisma made up for his lack of judgment and made people who should have known better lose theirs, including Stuart Littlemore. In his 1996 work, The Media and Me, Littlemore writes how

'The ABC had a slavish belief in "balance"...In one of my bulletins as chief sub, I "balanced" twenty lines of a Whitlam speech on the defects in Australian foreign policy with twenty lines about Billy McMahon being pelted with flour bombs...'

Littlemore was not alone. Many other senior journalists including Alan Ramsy, Kerry O'Brien, Milton Cockburn, Laurie Oakes and David Solomon were keen supporters of Whitlam, and his successors Hayden and Hawke. The attraction of these journalist to Whitlam was indicative of the dominance of the left among the educated middle classes and cultural elates. Undoubtedly many of these journalists have changed political colours since the 1970s, but in the ABC old loyalties, or more accurately, old influences die hard. Some are prepared to justify or tolerate bias on the grounds that it counter balances that of the commercial stations.

Undoubtedly the quality of journalism on the ABC surpasses anything on the commercial stations. The ABC, unlike the commercial stations, presents serious news and current affairs, providing quality where quality is lacking. But people forget that commercial stations are neither Left nor Right. They are populist, demagogues in the hunt for ratings, appealing to prejudices of the lowest common denominator; sensationalising, trivialising and forever dumbing down. The fact is that populism, when ratings are involved, is not exclusively of the right or the left. The ABC represents the serious against the superficial, not Left against Right.

Chairman of the ABC, Donald McDonald, has argued that there is nothing wrong with bias so long as there exists competing bias. He is obviously correct. The treatment delivered to McDonald for exposing his personal liking for John Howard, be it inappropriate or not, illustrates that the ABC has little tolerance for the chairman's variety of bias. Are we to expect an apology or disclaimer ?